Image is of Trump's initial set of reciprocal tariffs. Source is CNN and Reuters.
It's difficult to keep up with the news around the tariffs; they get instated, then dropped, then reinstated... for example, on Friday, Trump said that certain electronics like smartphones would be exempt, causing markets to rally a great deal, but now the Commerce Secretary has said that they might not be exempt? The state of play right now, if you haven't been keeping up this week, is that the US recently announced a 90-day global pause on implementing the tariffs he had planned (that is, 25% on certain Canadian and Mexican goods, and at least 10% on every other nation) but nonetheless increased tariffs on China to 145%.
Meanwhile, China has been - quite remarkably - standing their ground, increasing tariffs on the US to 125%, and putting restrictions on rare earths. Xi Jinping has been in Vietnam and has made statements against a tariff war there, saying that it would have no winners. Meanwhile, a Chinese spokesperson has essentially said that China can endure the tariff war due to the increasing demand from its domestic market in combination with its growing economic ties with other countries.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
New greek political party "Course of Freedom" surging to 2nd place in a poll.
Guy who skimmed wikipedia said that they are:
And syriza polled below the old center-left and the communists. The rulling party also fell by a lot but greece has something where whoever ends up in 1st place gets a bunch of extra MPs so idk if that matters.
This is going to be controversial but imho about the "neither left nor right" position, in a party that is pretty clearly on the left, it's a smart move. It's one thing when you're an organization that has a history (and I don't advocate such organizations, like mine, to do this) but if you're starting a completely new political project there's really no reason to assume an identity on a left-right or a communism-capitalism that most people either don't care about or actively disdain. Not that many people think of themselves as "leftists" or "right-wingers", if anything most people probably consider themselves "centrists" even when they have a bunch of radical positions, so ditching the label and actively rejecting it in favor of more concrete political positions is a good way to past the skepticism of the masses about modern politics. And at the end of the day, any party or any smart politician will take positions considered to be left or right at different occasions, the point is whether they are the right position/policy.
However, the strategy creates its own tensions and down the line (like we've seen with italy's M5S) you DO have to affirm where you stand on the left-right axis or people will affirm it for you.
Of course anyone seasoned enough can tell whether your "neither left nor right" party is actually left or right, and this one seems to be left which is why it doesn't bother me. I'm also not greek so 0 stakes
It's very much a leader-centered party. Their leader, Zoe Konstantopoulou, used to be a quite prominent member of Syriza (actually her father was for a time the leader of "Synaspismos" a left party from the 90ies whose members were mostly communists who split with KKE and later became Syriza) but she left the party after the 2015 capitulation. Around 2012-2015 she was known for pushing for reparations from Germany for the Nazi occupation, at the time what some people thought was a useful argument for forgiving the greek debt or turning around the discussion from "we owe money to Germany" to "they owe us too". During the first Syriza government she was named as the speaker of the greek parliament. She is known for being a firebrand, always speaking in parliament over the allotted time, and getting into arguments very often. She is also a lawyer who has been involved in some interesting/public cases: In the past, she was representing a journalist who started a motion against Henry Kissinger for his involvement in the military dictatorship in greece as well as part of a motion in the ICC against British officials for crimes committed during the Iraq war. She defended the family of Alexis Grigoropoulos (the 15 year old boy who was shot by a police officer in cold blood in 2008 which led to some of the biggest riots in modern greek history). Her recent surge in popularity has to do with the fact that she is currently defending pro-bono the families of the youth that died in the Tempi train crash in 2023 (I wrote a post a few weeks back about the greek protests related to this), and has been the most vocal critic of the government for the handling of that case.
I think that her politics are incoherent, and I agree that the "we are not left or right" will have to face reality if she ever gets close to power. It's unclear whether her popularity will keep going up or it will burst. Greek politics right now are too chaotic to tell.
Leader centered policy that’s both left and right. Where have I heard this one before?